Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, NYCC | Tagged: chris claremont, marvel, salvador larroca, x-men

Chris Claremont in Talks with Marvel About New X-Men Project with Salvador Larroca

Published Fri, 04 Oct 2019 14:00:58 -0500

Legendary X-Men writer Chris Claremont was interviewed on Syfy Wire's NYCC livestream, and he dropped some major news. The interview began by discussing Claremont's return to New Mutants alongside Bill Sienkiewicz.

"The New Mutants look brilliant," Claremont said when asked what he thinks of returning to the X-Men in the current era. "I can't speak for the rest of the X-family. I don't do it anymore. Bill and I think of this as the next issue of New Mutants. It took us 35 years to get there."

Asked whether fans need to worry about how it ties into House of X and Powers of X, Claremont said, "Oh god, no."

Earlier this week, speaking about that same topic, Claremont said that he has an "infinite score" more X-men stories to tell, though whether or not he gets to tell them is entirely up to Marvel, which retains him as a Marvel exclusive writer and yet only seems to use him for one-shots and short stories in anthologies. Earlier today, we speculated on whether we could finally an announcement of something more substantial from Claremont and Marvel, with Claremont set to appear with Marvel Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski at the Marvel Fanfare panel on Saturday.

In his livestream interview, Claremont doused that fire with a lot more fuel. Later in the interview when asked about coming back for more X-Men.

"That's the trouble with falling in love with these idiots, Claremont said. "You can't walk away no matter how hard you try. As a line was said in Godfather 3, 'no matter how hard I try to walk out, they keep pulling me back in.' I figure if Al Pacino can get away with it, I might as well give it a shot. On the other hand, when you're given a chance to work with Bill… the possibility arose last week of me getting to work once more with Salva[dor Larroca]—"

Asked to explain, Claremont elaborated: "It's a possibility. I have no idea what that means, but I'm sitting on the edge of my seat."

So are we, Chris. So are we.

"I guess you better come to the panel tomorrow with me and C.B. and see what that's all about," Claremont continued, "because it will be as much of a surprise to me as it'll be to you. And probably a surprise to C.B. as well."

Claremont and Larroca first collaborated on a three-year run on Fantastic Four following the Heroes Reborn and Heroes Return event in the late nineties, and the pair went on to collaborate on X-Treme X-Men during the same era as Grant Morrison's New X-Men. The better book? Claremont and Larroca's X-Treme X-Men by far. Most recently, Larroca was the regular artist on Uncanny X-Men with writer Matthew Rosenberg before the X-books were relaunched by Jonathan Hickman.